Hello, and welcome to The Impact Code, your go-to podcast for stories of transformation, inspiration, and impact. I'm your host, Brett Hollenbeck, a seeker and storyteller dedicated to bringing you conversations that illuminate the path to personal growth and collective change. Each episode, we dive deep into the lives of innovators, thinkers, and doers who are breaking boundaries and making their difference in the world.



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With a commitment to personal service and supporting local initiatives, we help turn dreams into reality for individuals and businesses alike. If you enjoyed today's show, you can show support by heading over to www.towercommunitybank.com and checking us out. Big thanks to Tower Community Bank for their support in making this episode possible and for their ongoing commitment to community and empowerment.



So sit back, tune in, and get ready to be inspired by today's conversation with Craig Goldberg. Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of The Impact Code, where we dive into stories of extraordinary individuals transforming lives. Today, I'm excited to introduce a trailblazer in the realm of relaxation and healing, Craig Goldberg.



Craig's story is a testament to the transformative power of innovation and dedication. As a relaxation expert and certified vibroacoustic therapy practitioner, he is dedicated over 40 years to exploring the profound effects of sound and vibration on the human body, mind, and spirit. Craig's journey began with a personal mission to find healing solutions for his wife, leading him down a path of discovery and invention.



But Craig's impact doesn't stop with his inventions. His mission to educate and empower individuals to achieve a deeper sense of calmness and resilience has made him a sought after leader in the field. Through his engaging workshops and teachings, he travels the globe spreading the science of mindfulness and the life changing benefits of his work.



Today, Craig stands as a beacon of hope and transformation, guiding countless individuals towards a more peaceful and fulfilling life. His commitment to innovation and wellness continues to inspire and change lives everywhere. So prepare to be captivated by a visionary who's now just shaping the future of relaxation and mindfulness, but is also touching lives with every vibration and sound wave.



Please join me in welcoming Craig Goldberg to The Impact Code. Craig, welcome. Wow, Brett, that's amazing.



Let's go. I want to talk to that guy for sure. Let's go.



I appreciate the time today and I know our time is short. So I want to jump right in and talk about where did your mindfulness journey begin? So for me, it was really stressed and anxious in New York. I mean, ultimately, when the stress and the anxiety starts to develop, that's I think when the journey begins.



I don't know that I found mindfulness for some time in my career, but just even the conversation that we were having before we got started about how to take breaks and how to respect the downtime, being cognizant and aware of the fact that I can't go, go, go like I was when I was in my 20s. I'm 44 years old. So I've been, you know, I've been at this game for a minute.



I started working full time when I was 19 and hustling, going to school at night, working full time during the day, 12 hour days, three, four hours of school every day, five, six days a week. It was a really relentless kind of schedule that I kept. And I think a lot of folks are feeling like they're in that same exact grind.



Right. So for me, mindfulness really started when I recognized that I'm working really hard and I'm pushing myself really hard and I need that downtime so that I can rejuvenate, recuperate. Ultimately, it was my wife's journey through her sensitivity to gluten that led us down the path of a more holistic lifestyle.



And that's ultimately what began to click the light on spending a lot of time teaching, training and educating on the efficacy of essential oils and yoga retreats and conferences and trade shows and being surrounded by folks that were more holistically mindful and participating in these activities like a sound bowl healing, a sound therapy session or sound healing and just being exposed to the power of sound and vibration, its impact on my physiology, not having any idea what that was all about. And now, of course, over the last decade, we've really dedicated we being my wife and I have really dedicated ourselves to learning and understanding how the human body operates, giving it all the vitality that it needs in order for it to flourish and operate the way that it was so beautifully designed to operate. And and that's a lot broader than obviously sound and vibration.



But what Dom and I, my business partner and I found is that sound and vibration is the most pivotal. There are a lot of amazing things that you can do for the human body. And I talk about all 10 of these as a well rounded approach to health and wellness, sunlight, grounding, clean food, clean water, cuddle time, oxytocin, right? Hot and cold therapy.



I mean, there's a red light therapy. There's a lot of different things that you can do. However, if you're stressed and anxious, if your body is in fight or flight, if your nervous system is dysregulated, then all of it is is really moot.



Yeah, it literally does not matter how clean and organic your food is if you're not digesting it. And if you're in fight or flight for whatever reason, good, bad and different, correct, not correct, triggered or mistriggered, if if you're sitting in fight or flight, your body is not operating the way that it was naturally designed to operate. It's not focused on any of the maintenance tasks.



It's not focused on taking care of yourself and killing off dead cells and rejuvenating itself. It's focused on survival mode. And once I learned that and I started digging into what that means and we're going to in this podcast, the light bulb started going off and I started to recognize just how important sleep is, just how important meditation and mindfulness, whatever that practice might be for you.



And meditation can be an intimidating word. But that journey really started when I realized that stress and anxiety is killing Americans. And it was killing me and it was robbing me of a long, healthy life.



And I want to help other people to live the longest, most powerful, healthy life that they possibly can by optimizing their performance through sound and vibration. Ultimately, there's so many things. There's a lot there.



Yeah. There's so many things there that we can dive into. And I think one of the ones that I want to spend a little bit of time focusing in on is this idea of stress is killing Americans.



And and I think many people around the world, I think we tend to, especially in the United States, focus on productivity as a form of value. And can you talk to what, what do you see when it comes to like what percentage of people that you see are dealing with something related to stress? Is it everybody? Is it high? I mean, in the, in the surveys, you're looking at 70 plus percent of Americans are talking about stress and anxiety every single day. That number is astronomical, right? Huge, huge.



Um, and, and unfortunately, when you look at the death toll, the reasons why Americans die all cause mortality. All right. So all cause mortality is basically like of all the reasons why Americans die.



Here's the top 10. And when you look at the top 10 reasons why Americans die six out of the 10 are rooted in stress and anxiety, you remove the stress, you remove the anxiety and those six reasons for death go away. Wow.



And that to me is bigger than any pandemic. It's bigger than any epidemic. It's bigger than any concept and it gets fragmented because we're not talking about heart disease, right? But heart disease has its roots in stress and anxiety, right? We're not talking about, you know, kidney failure or whatever it might be, but it gets fragmented and the conversation gets distracted because even though stress and anxiety is, is correlated to each one of these reasons for death, it gets kind of lost in, in that.



Um, so it's really unfortunate. We all know what a stressful day feels like. We all know.



Um, I, I unfortunately know what a panic attack feels like. Um, it's, it's terrible. Look, even here in my household now we're, we're dealing with it.



And this is what I do for a living. Right. Okay.



So stress and anxiety is a function of this incredible society that we have co-created, right? I don't believe there's any getting rid of it. Um, life happens and situations unfold that are outside of your control as we live in this myriad of interconnectedness and things happen, right? Things are constantly happening around us, how we deal with those, how we respond to those happenstances is ultimately what's going to determine our stress level. And this is something that is trained and it is conditioned.



You are conditioned to handle stress better. So if you're not actively doing anything to manage your stress, to teach your nervous system how to stay calm and relaxed more often, then you are probably feeling stressed and anxious every single day. And like I said, like an elite athlete that trains a muscle to do the same thing over and over and over again, you too can train your nervous system to spend more time in a parasympathetic nervous system response, which is common relaxed.



It's not to say that stress and anxiety is not going to happen. It's not to say that your body is not going to go into fight or flight when it needs to. Um, and I'll give you a great example.



A great example is the frontline worker. Um, and uh, you know, the, the good men and women that are defending us day in and day out. How can a fireman run into a building that's burning and see the carnage potentially and, and deal with what they need to deal with and stay cool, calm and collected.



And the reason is they train for it, right? Whereas the civilian whose house is burning down is in shock, has adrenaline flowing, cortisol flowing, is stressed, not making good decisions. And this is something very common that you see with frontline workers. They're constantly dealing with folks that are in that state because they're not accustomed to it.



But the fire, the firemen or woman that's charging into that building, well, this is all business for them. This is what they do, right? Good, good guys and gals in the military as well. Why is, why are they so good with bullets flying over their head? Well, it's because they go through basic training and, and training after that where they have bullets flying past their head every single day.



And it, you become desensitized to it, right? You condition the body to be in that situation and to stay cool, calm and collected in the face of whatever it is that you're dealing with. Well, we can do the same thing with our typical day in and day out trials and tribulations. When you hit construction on the road, instead of freaking out about what's going on, you stay cool, calm and collected and, and you make a phone call and you say, Hey, I'm running late.



I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but the highway shut down. I'll be, you know, I'll be a few minutes behind, right? Or insert stressful situation here. We can decide how we respond to that situation by staying cool, calm and collected.



And we've got techniques and tactics for that, which I'm happy to share. Um, but it very much is a conditioning. And when we understand the impact that stress and anxiety is having on our day to day lives and on our overall health, I think now all of a sudden you want to do something about it and you want to take that active lane to say, well, what can I do to condition my nervous system to spend more time, calm and relaxed and less time stressed and anxious and be more aware of that.



So, yeah, I think, I think you hit the nail on the head. In my own experience, I somewhat have found that stress is such a part of my life that sometimes I don't even see it. Sometimes I don't even feel it.



But then when I pause, so last week I was at the beach, right? When I paused those first couple of days, I was just like, wow, I am stressed. And there was nothing happening. I was sitting at the beach looking at the ocean, you know, watching my kids play in the water and I'm stressed because it's not that it wasn't there.



It's that I wasn't feeling it. Right. And I think there's times when we're so accustomed to it in almost the opposite way of what you're talking where we don't even notice that it's there.



But then when we notice it, we're like, okay, now see, I've got to do something about it. So let's dive into some of those techniques. And then I want to talk a little bit more specifically about sort of your type of meditation, which is more assisted by technology and the inventions that you've built.



But let's just start with I'm driving down the interstate and someone cuts me off or there's a traffic jam and I have somewhere I need to be. I'm stressed. Yeah.



Look, so that stress response that begins to pick up you begin to probably breathe, breathe shallower shortness of breath. You begin to pick up the pace. You begin to feel your blood pressure probably increasing and your and your heartbeat starting to increase that trigger of that stress.



Look, there's, there's two kinds of in that even of the example that you just gave, right? Two very different scenarios. Um, a car cuts you off. Um, my, my father was a yellow cab driver in New York city.



Okay. Um, I know how to drive and when people cut me off, I'm also from New York. I've got a little bit of New Yorker in me for sure.



Right. So there's that illicit response that comes from somebody. What the, is this guy doing, you know, what, what's the matter with you? Right.



Like, uh, the guy that's driving faster than you is always a maniac and the guy that's driving slower than you is always an idiot. And that's relative to your perspective, whatever that means. Right.



Um, so there's, I think two different scenarios. The first scenario is you get cut off. Now you're in a life threatening situation and that happens in an instant, right? Somebody cuts you off, you swerve, um, you're triggering the exact response that you're supposed to trigger in that case.



Okay. However, after the threat is neutralized, after you save yourself and you're back in your lane and that guy's out of sight and, and you have rid yourself of that scenario, your, you're supposed to go back into calm and relaxed. Right.



And it takes some time for the chemical cascades to calm down. A lot of times when something like that happens, you're kind of shaking afterwards. The reason you're shaking is because of adrenaline and cortisol that the brain releases into your bloodstream.



And we'll talk about that in a second. The other scenario that you mentioned is traffic and that traffic could be routine traffic. If you live in LA, like, I think everybody in LA expects there to be traffic on their way.



It's just not a stressful situation necessarily unless you're running late and that's different. But like everybody in LA gives themselves an hour to get there because they know there's going to be traffic and it just moves slower. But here in Vegas, there's rarely any traffic.



If I find myself in traffic in Las Vegas, it's my fault, right? Because there's always traffic in one place, the two 1515 interchange, there's always traffic going up to 15 along the strip. And frankly, there's a half a dozen other ways for me to go that avoid all of that traffic. So if I find myself in traffic, usually I know it and I'm on ways or, or Googled, right? Whatever.



So two different scenarios. Okay. If I find myself in traffic and I'm stressed and anxious because there's construction or there's new construction, that's even a little bit different than it is to have a threat on my life with somebody cutting into my carpool lane or cutting into my lane.



So let's talk about a, the cutoff and B the construction. So in both cases, it's the same trigger. It's the same response that is triggered in your nervous system.



Interestingly enough. Okay. If you find yourself in traffic and you're running late and you're starting to think about all the things that are going to the dominoes that are going to fall, I'm going to be 10 minutes late.



I have this job interview. I'm not going to get the job. Now all of a sudden your brain is going to a place where it's now life threatening.



This is the part that's really interesting. If you are calm and relaxed and you find yourself in traffic, what do you do? You put on a good tune, you call a friend, you roll down the windows and you kind of soak it up and you look at the guy in the car next to you like, eh, this is, you know, it's, it's, what's going on here, right? You're kind of calm and relaxed and that's where I want you to get to because ultimately everything that's unfolding around you is going to unfold exactly the way that it is and it's going to unfold that way regardless of how you feel. So you may as well feel calm and relaxed.



And even the person listening right now is like, Craig, what are you talking about? I, I, I feel stressed and anxious and it's, and they're, they're, they're correct. Okay. It's these dominoes that start to fall when we, when we start stressful and anxious, it's this self deprecating downward spiral that we need to pull out of and we need a pattern break and come out of.



Okay. Now let's talk about the getting cut off or finding yourself in traffic and what's actually happening in your body when you, when you, when your nervous system establishes a threat. Okay.



Because it's the same, that existential threat, whether it's physical, emotional, spiritual, um, the body only has one way to react and that's increasing cortisol and adrenaline through your bloodstream. The adrenaline diverts energy from the core maintenance tasks of the body, like digestion, your immune system, reproductive organs, rational thinking. Those are the big ones.



And it diverts that energy to the major muscle groups of the body. We only have a set amount of energy that we can expend during the day. So when you're in a life threatening situation, the brain goes survival mode, divert energy to biceps, triceps, back quads, hamstrings, so that I can fight or I can run.



Now if you're walking down the strip late at night or you're walking down an alley in the middle of the night and, and there's somebody behind you, that spidey sense starts to go off. Uh, that's when you want that extra power, right? To protect yourself or to run. When you're sitting in traffic or somebody cuts you off, you want that split, right? Let's take those two different scenarios.



When you're, somebody cuts you off, you want that split second reaction time. Brain knows it needs that leverage. So you want that extra diverted to your major muscle groups.



But when you're sitting in traffic, I don't need to expend that extra energy. I don't need the adrenaline and cortisol. It's not serving me in that situation to turn off rational thinking, to turn off digestion, to turn off reproductive processes, to turn off your immune system.



In that latter scenario, which happens more often than not, right? Most of the time we're not in life threatening situations. I just drove from here to Salt Lake City. We were talking about me snowboarding up and snowboard and then back.



Never not once did I get cut off. I did 400 miles each direction and I was fine. The entire way the car was in cruise control.



I was just John. I was laid back listening to my podcast. I was fine most days.



That's what's going on. However, I did hit construction. It's the same place.



I've done this drive probably a half a dozen times in the last six months. There's always been construction after Mesquite before I get up to the gorge and it goes down to one lane and I always get frustrated and I don't understand why. I know it's there.



I'm looking at ways. It's telling me when I'm going to get there. It's taking into account the fact that there's construction there because there's always construction.



Why am I stressed out? So I'm not. The reality is I take a deep breath. I recognize all the things that I just shared with you.



There's always traffic here that I'm going to get there at four 44 or whatever time it says on my, on my ways. And it's taking that into account. So just sit back, relax, put on the music and chill in that other scenario where you get cut off or you have that life threatening reaction.



It could take four to five hours for your body to calm down. Now that adrenaline, that cortisol, it literally turns off rational thinking. So you're not thinking your brain uses the most amount of energy in the body.



The second most amount of energy in the body is your digestive track. So the first thing a brain does is it says divert energy from the brain and thinking rationally to the major muscle groups. Then it says divert energy from digestion, turn off digestion.



So now when you're stressed and anxious, it doesn't matter how clean or organic to go back to my point. When I opened up, it doesn't matter how wonderfully, uh, how beautiful the spring water is that you're drinking, how mineralized it is, the hydrogen that's attached there. It doesn't matter that you're taking a $500 brain, nootropic and supplement.



Um, because all of that is turned off. The body overrides all of that and says, I need the energy diverted from digestion to the major muscle groups. Same with reproductive organs.



I know a lot of people that are trying to get pregnant, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars sometimes on IVF and other scenarios. And in some cases that's absolutely necessary in many, it's really related to stress and anxiety. Uh, and then of course the immune system, we know how important the immune system was over the last few years, uh, and certainly as moving forward, um, the holidays are stressful time.



There's a reason why illness and, and, and those types of adverse health reactions, cause I don't like saying getting sick, um, happen around the holidays. The holidays are a stressful time for a lot of people going back and seeing your family. It breeds stress and anxiety.



Therefore with your immune system decreased, you are more susceptible to be fighting off some type of ailment or issue like the flu or a cold or something worse. Who knows what they're going to, you know, throw at us next. But all of a sudden you start to realize when you're stressed and anxious, even my voice and my tone, as I'm talking about all of this, I've noticed that it's heightened cause I get very passionate when I talk about this stuff.



But the reality is when we just, take a deep breath, we slow down and we start to think about the impact that stress and anxiety is having on our overall day to day. And all of a sudden we realize that the world is going to unfold around me the way the world is going to unfold. And I get to decide how I'm going to show up in the face of that happenstance, whatever it might be.



And then I get to control the way that I show up and in doing so I choose to be cool, calm and collected. I choose to be calm and relaxed, especially if it's that latter traffic scenario versus the former getting cut off scenario. And my wife will tell you flat out, like I get cut off.



I I'm like, what are you doing? Right? Like what? And it takes me a second to, you're right. It's good. You're right.



All's well. They didn't do it on purpose. Oh, just wave my hand.



And then I'm like, Hey, I'm sorry. I got you. We're good.



Everything's all right back here. Whatever. Right.



We get to decide. Victor Frankel wrote an amazing book and about, he's a Holocaust survivor. And one of the quotes in there was between a stimuli and a reaction, there's a space and it's in that space that we get to decide how we will respond and react to that stimuli.



And it's in that space that we find peace, right? It's in that reaction that we get to choose because the world around us is a crazy wild place. And it's going to continue to operate the way that it's operating. We get to decide how we show up in the face of those happenstances and happenings.



It's important. It's so important. And, and as you're talking through all of this, some of the things that are crossing my mind are there's days when I feel really capable and I feel really like it just comes easier, right? There's days when I'm, you know, I maybe I'm not in as big of a hurry or for whatever reason, even if it's the same scenario, I may respond better.



And I don't know if that's a result of practicing or I don't know exactly what's behind that. But if I want to practice and I want to get better, where do I start? All right. So now all of a sudden, all of those other things that I mentioned come into play.



Okay. So let's play out a couple of different scenarios. Okay.



You get a good night's sleep. You don't get a good night's sleep. Okay.



You know, you're going to perform better when you get a good night's sleep. I have a three and a half year old. I don't remember the last time I got a good night's sleep though.



Right. You got kids, right? Like, like there's nothing like a fellow parent to realize how important sleep is and how powerful it is. Right.



Cause my daughter wakes up at two o'clock in the morning. She has to pee, whatever. And I'm there, I don't think twice.



I'm not mad at her. Like, no, thanks for coming to get me instead of wetting your bed. So I don't have to deal with a wet bed 20 minutes from now.



Instead I just wake up. Yeah, totally. Right.



So, so think of, um, think we can go through all the different scenarios. If you don't get sunlight, you're going to feel worse than you do. If you get natural sunlight on your face in the morning, preferably.



Um, if you don't ground and have your feet on the ground and you're not diverting that energy, uh, to the earth, you're not going to feel as well. If you're not exposed to red light therapy, I got a red light that's shining on me right now, right? That stimulates the sunlight for me because I'm in front of my computer doing what I'm doing right now, which is important. If I don't drink clean water, really, really particular about my water.



I use reverse osmosis. I have a whole house water filtration system. It's remineralized, right? I drink salt throughout the day.



Um, so that I'm remineralizing my body on a regular basis because I live in the desert. I like to sweat every day, getting an exercise every day. If I don't get my exercise versus if I do, if I'm not eating clean, organic food last night, I had a phenomenal meal.



It was a little heavier. It was a Christmas meal. I was like, it's a holiday.



I'm writing it off. We're good. I ate a little more than I usually eat a little later than I usually eat.



I had the sweets after dinner. I slept like a rock last night though. That was amazing.



So all of these different scenarios right now come into play for exactly what you just said. Um, waking up on the right side of the bed versus waking up on the wrong side of the bed is the easy example, right? When you wake up on the right side of the bed, there's nothing you can't handle. You're good to go.



You're just rolling with the punches and you're just in flow throughout the course of the day. You wake up on the wrong side of the bed cause you didn't sleep well. You got a lot on your mind, a lot of stress and anxiety, right? Um, then it's like this cascade of, of negativity where just one thing happens after another.



Yeah. Um, I'll give you a great example. I'm, I pretty much try and be as clean as I can, but I always make a mess.



I've been with my wife for 15 years. It's a joke that we have. Um, and it's just ongoing, right? Like I, I rarely make it through a meal without dropping something on my shirt or spilling something off my plate.



And it's just kind of comical. So if I'm making coffee in the morning and I'm having a good day and, and I take that first sip of coffee and the lid malfunctions, right. And I spill coffee on my shirt.



If I'm having a good day, I go, no sweat. I'm just going to go back into my bedroom. I'm still home.



I'm going to change my shirt and I'm going to rock and roll from having a bad day. Oh, it's like, and luckily I don't have many bad days anymore, but if you're having a bad day, it's like, Oh man, what am I going to do? You're not thinking rationally. The rational thing to do is go back in your bedroom and change your shirt.



Right. No sweat. Right.



Got a bunch of different shirts. Uh, go change your shirt. But when you're not thinking rationally, when you're in fight or flight and your brain diverts that energy from rational thinking to major muscle groups of the body, now all of a sudden you're like, I don't, I don't know what to do.



Right. And that's when my wife will come in usually and chuckle and laugh at me and be like, go change your shirt. And I'll be like, Oh, Oh yeah, I'll go change my shirt.



So you can see how it's this self deprecating negative loop that when we're stressed and anxious, we're really not serving ourselves. So what tools can we use to make sure that doesn't happen to your point and to your question? And the reality is the first thing is awareness. The first thing is recognizing that you're feeling stress and anxiety or knowing that you're feeling it, even though you're not feeling it in your scenario of going to the beach and taking a deep breath and all of a sudden being like, man, I, why don't I feel stressed right now? Literally feet in the, in the ground and the sand.



And, and, and now all of a sudden you can go, okay, now I know I feel stressed and anxiety. Now you get back to the work day and the work week and you're doing your thing. And now you can go, all right, even though I'm not feeling stressed and anxiety because like a bulldog and the well-trained animal that you are in the office, you're just a go getter, a type personality.



Like I don't feel stressed. Let's go. Like I said, 12 hours of school, three hours, I'm sorry, 12 hours of work getting after it, making a hundred grand a year at 19.



And then three hours of school. I didn't feel stressed. I was, I was ready to go at 20 years old, 21 years old.



Like let's get it. The reality is you're just pushing through it. You're probably using stimulants and I drank a lot of coffee back then.



Um, I ate a lot of chocolate. I indulged in a lot of things, uh, living in New York city and um, and you're just pushing through it. The mature thing to do.



And when you know you're starting to graduate and grow into taking really good care of yourself is when you say, I know I'm feeling stress and anxiety on some level, even though I'm not showing symptoms or signs of it, even though I, I, I don't visibly feel it. I still know my nervous system is responding to the world around it, which by the way, all of our nervous systems are and I'm going to take a proactive step in taking care of my own mental health and my own overall stress and anxiety levels by sitting down to meditate every day. And that's an intimidating word for a lot of people, which is why I believe in tech assisted meditation and what we do.



And it's as easy as saying, I'm going to do a sound loud session every day. That's it. It feels good.



It feels amazing. It tingles and tickles every, every muscle in your body. It moves every cell in your body.



It helps with circulation. It helps with lymphatic drainage. It helps open up the detox pathway so that your body is detoxing better.



It helps with digestion. It helps literally every single muscle relax from the outside in. And what I mean by that is vibration therapy, vibroacoustic therapy, specifically what we do here at in harmony interactive.



When you're laying down on the sound lounge, every muscle in your body is receiving a message from the vibration itself, telling it to relax, overriding your nervous system's command to tighten and tense. So I use this term a lot, kind of relaxing from the outside in, you're doing a 22 minute session, laying on the sound lounge, tickling every cell in your body, feeling incredible. And you're doing an awful lot for your own mental, spiritual, physical wellbeing.



So vibroacoustic therapy, how is it specifically that the interplay of sound and silence sort of contribute to this deeper mindfulness and relaxation? So it comes down to on our homepage, it says, say goodbye to a distracted mind. Say hello to a relaxed existence. I have it memorized.



It just happens to be, I keep my website up when I'm, when I'm doing these podcasts, but it says say goodbye to a distracted mind. Say hello to a relaxed existence. And the reason for that is because our mind is very distracting and often we are getting distracted by what's happening in the world around us.



And that is usually at the crux of why people can't meditate. Seven years ago, before I was working here at, in harmony, at the time it was called holistic health science. But seven years ago, if you asked me to sit down and meditate, I would laugh at you like meditate.



Not that's, first of all, I can't do it. Second of all, I think it's a huge waste of time because the entire time I'm sitting down, I'm thinking about all the things I'm not doing and all the things I should be doing. So it's that thought pattern that becomes that self deprecating thought pattern just continues.



So you want me to sit here for 10 minutes from the outside, looking in, I look very quiet and peaceful, but inside I'm just thinking about the to do list. I'm just thinking about all the things that I could be doing. And that's a lot of people, right? We serve two different parties.



We serve those that can't meditate and those that, that have been meditating for a long time in the former, those that have that, that can't meditate. We literally distract your mind using sound and vibration. So to your point, to answer your question, sound and vibration guides the mind, body, and spirit into that meditative state.



What is a meditative state? A slower brainwave state. What is sleep? A slower brainwave state. So sleep is a perception, a conscious perception of a slower brainwave state.



When your eyes are open, you're processing the world around you. You're in a beta brainwave. It's measured between 12 to 14 Hertz, all the way up to about 40 Hertz.



Below that is an alpha brainwave state measured from 12 to 14 Hertz down to about eight Hertz. Below that is a theta brainwave state, eight Hertz down to four Hertz. Below that is a Delta brainwave state, four Hertz down to about a half a Hertz above 40 Hertz is gamma.



It's associated with higher thoughts and higher consciousness. The target brainwave state for meditation is alpha or theta. And when your eyes are open, you're typically in a beta brainwave.



However, so many Americans, because that's where the science and the research is focused. So many Americans are so overtired. They are still over stimulated as I drink my cup of coffee and eat chocolate and other things that stimulate our nervous system to be awake.



We are so overstimulated. Your brain only knows to do one thing and that is to drop into a Delta brainwave to rest. But since you're overstimulating yourself with coffee, you're keeping yourself awake.



A lot of people are actually walking around in a Delta brainwave state. And I see this through the brain scans that we do and through the HRV testing that we do. So it's really important for you to proactively take that step.



So if you can't meditate or meditation seems intimidating, know that all we're doing is slowing the brain down into an alpha or a theta brainwave state. The same thing that's supposed to happen when we sleep, but so many people are sleeping using sleep aids, the wrong sleep aids, I might add that they're not inducing a healthy sleep cycle, that they're never getting into alpha theta and Delta sleep during their sleep cycle, which we're supposed to do. Different things happen when we drift into these different brainwave states.



And if we're not achieving these different brainwave states, the brain never gets organized. The brain never gets to an optimal performance level. So that former person that says, Hey, I want to meditate, but I can using our meditation cushion, getting on our sound lounge too.



These are devices that are designed specifically to lull your body, mind and spirit into that meditative state. We guide you right there. We say say goodbye to a distracted mind, say hello to a relaxed existence because sound and vibration are actually distracting your mind, occupying your mind and allowing you to now drift into that relaxed state.



And it's, and it's absolutely wonderful. The other thing that I'll just wrap up with is we work with folks that have a 20 year, 20 minutes a day meditation practice. These are guys and gals that have been meditating on a regular basis.



Some of them have training through TM or other types of mantra training. When those folks get on our technology, they go deeper, faster, and they stay there. And a lot of times the text message I get is I had no idea how deep I could actually go.



Wow. Because meditation is something very difficult, Brett. I could walk you through a guided meditation and from the outside, like I said before, you could look very peaceful and you might look like you're meditating, but on the inside you're just like fucking Greg.



Oh man, this is just not working. I'm just going to sit here and be still for another 10 minutes and then he's going to wrap and say, how was that? I'm going to say it was great. And then we get back to what I need to do and I'm never gonna have to do this again.



Right? Right. When in reality, when in reality, you're not meditating, you're not getting any benefit from it. You look from the outside like you're doing it right.



But I have no way to verify if you're doing it right or not. I guess I would know afterwards. Right.



But, but that's the reality. But I put you on my meditation cushion and you put on the headphones and you listen to one of our music meditations, the mind, body, and spirit goes to that place. It's guided to that place.



So if you've got that 20 minute a day, 20 year meditation practice, now all of a sudden you're dropped in faster because like a rut in a record, that needle just finds it and drills down into those neural pathways to get you where you need to go. And now all of a sudden through tech assisted meditation, you are training your brain to go into that meditative state. You are conditioning that muscle, your nervous system as a muscle, you are training and conditioning yourself to go to that parasympathetic nervous system response, to go to that calm and relax that rest and digest.



And now all of a sudden to go back to those two scenarios. Now when you get cut off, you're going to react the way that you're supposed to react because we're not taking away your body's ability to go into fight or flight or, or to go into that sympathetic nervous system response when you need it. It's there.



But then as soon as it dissipates, one deep breath takes your body back to the muscle memory of your in harmony meditation and you're dropped back into that place. Same scenario with the traffic and the construction. You're never really triggered because you recognize that, Oh, there's traffic.



No problem. Waste says I'm going to be there in 15 minutes. That gets me there five minutes ahead of when I need to be there.



No sweat. Hmm. And all of a sudden you have this relaxed existence because of the training you did at home.



It's not very different from going to the gym. You go to the gym, you work out your muscles so that when God forbid something happens and you need to do something, you can do it. It's that simple.



You go and squat 600 pounds so that you can flip over a small car if you had to and somebody was trapped underneath it. If you didn't go to the gym and work out, you wouldn't be able to lift the car when you needed to. I don't know what this pretty extreme, uh, example, but, but you get it.



If you're not in the gym, like going to a rock climbing gym and then getting out on the wall, right? You go to the rock climbing gym, you're using technology and you're using a, uh, just cause I was just right by a rock climbing gym a couple of days ago. But, um, and then you go out on the rock and because you've trained for it in the gym, you're that much better out, out in the real world. And it's the same thing with, with our music meditations.



Our music meditations are teaching the mind, body and spirit, how to stay cool, calm and collected and to do so more often. So I know Craig, you have a ton of success stories and I'm curious because this is so fascinating to me that there's this, you know, path potentially to meditation that people, a lot of people I think don't even know exists, right? They think they have one option. They get an app that has the meditations, the guided meditations, they sit down, they torture themselves trying to quiet their mind.



They end up frustrated and they do it for five or seven days and then they're done. And then there's this other path that a lot of people don't know exist. Can you share a success story where it did make a difference in someone's life? And I think that would help sort of relate it a little better to some of the people that are listening and curious about what it's actually sort of like and what kind of impact it could have.



Yeah. And this is a regular conversation that, uh, that I have. We just moved, I don't know, 60 or 70 meditation cushions in November.



And now the text messages are starting to come in, um, that I've wanted to meditate and I finally have a tool that can help me to get there. I hear this over and over and over again. The reality is our downtime is as important as our uptime.



So what that means is rest and relaxation is as important as training in the gym. Recovery time is as important as breaking down the muscles and allowing them to rebuild themselves. And if we're not giving ourselves that time, then we are, um, seriously handicapping ourselves in our ability to perform at our best.



So I get these text messages on a regular basis. Uh, your, your technology has literally saved the day. Um, and I usually respond by it warms my heart.



These are the types of messages. Entrepreneurship is hard. Uh, fatherhood is hard.



Parenting is hard. And a lot of that, we need strength and we need to be able to dig deep into the depths of why we do what we do. And it's those text messages that I get on a regular basis.



I've got extreme examples and I've got just the normal, like what you'd see in a testimonial or a review. But we've got people that literally tell us we saved their lives, that your music meditations have shifted and changed the direction of my life. And because of what you do, I'm able to live just a normal life.



In some cases, some cases, some people are so incapacitated by stress and anxiety. And I, and I mean that like just completely cannot do anything that our technology just helps them to live a normal life. And then we've got top performers.



I've got a gentleman that I'm thinking about that literally sends me a text message before he goes into a pitch that he just got off the sound lounge and he's ready to rock and roll and that he's never felt better. Right? Like that person is somebody that is again, an aid type go getter, just like myself that knows how to turn it on and recognizes the power of rest and relaxation. And he'll do a sound lounge session 22 minutes before he goes into the board room to deal with his board or whatever it is that he needs to do.



And he sends me messages like, Hey, we rocked it today. Can't tell you what we talked about, but I can tell you that I was much better off because of my sound lounge session before that meeting. Thank you.



Incredible. What do you say to people who are that? And I'm the same way, to someone who says, Hey Craig, look, I see the benefit. I think it would be valuable in my life.



I just don't have time. I've got too much to do. I mean, look, I think for that individual, and that's exactly who I was as well.



You read enough autobiographies about some of the most powerful people on the planet. Um, and I think Elon Musk has downtime. Like really the guy who's running three companies, he's taken on the world.



I can tell you rest and relaxation is really important to him and he knows the value of it because he sleeps throughout the day. I know he does because I have reports back from Tesla and folks that work there that's like, Oh no, no, no. There's times where he's just sleeping in his office taking a little nap.



I wish he was doing it on a sound lounge. Right. And that's what, can you tell him about my company and what I do? Right.



Because that's the importance of it. Yeah. But the reality is, um, particularly in the entrepreneur world, we talk about life, about work life, balance.



Oh, that's wonderful. And unfortunately, um, I think work life balance for entrepreneurs and folks that are getting after it like you and me, I don't think it exists. Um, I have it to the extent that the best extent that I can have it.



But today's a great day. My daughter, a great example. My daughter's off from school today.



My wife is home. Um, and she's taking care of my daughter all day and I'm in my office, not out there hanging out with them because this is where I want to be. This is where I need to be.



And this is where I'm best suited to be right now. Right. Building and teaching, training and educating.



This is, I'm in my sweet spot. So to answer your question, um, I think everybody recognizes how important sleep is, especially if you don't have it. I think everybody recognizes how important it is to tend to your internal garden, which is basically what we do, but we're looking for the most effective and the most efficient way for us to do it.



Yeah. And that's where our technology comes in. That's where tech assisted meditation comes in.



Look, it's, it's the same reason why people cold plunge in the morning. Yeah. Right.



You're, you're getting, you're triggering that dopamine release, right? That two X or two and a half X dopamine release, whatever that looks like for four to eight hours. Why are you doing that? Because it unbelievably increases your vitality and your health. It's crazy.



I just read an article that was saying it's comparable to what you would get if you did cocaine, but it lasts significantly longer in terms of that's right. So the big, the big hit for cocaine, it lasts about nine minutes and it's a two and a half X increase in dopamine release to the brain. When you cold plunge, the, the, the release is three to four hours and it's that same two and a half X of dopamine release.



It's powerful, right? And then you get the cold shock proteins and you get all the other things that are happening in the body that are absolutely America. Amazing. Uh, the vasodilation, all of it, right? These are all incredible things for your health.



Why do we do that? Why do we do that? We do it because we know it's the most effective, efficient and fastest reacting thing that we can do for the body and sound and vibration dropping into a deeper meditative state is, is the same for your mental health and for your mental spirit. Because if you're going to take a 20 minute cat nap to rejuvenate and regenerate during the day, it may as well be on a sound lounge, which amplifies the benefits that you're getting by sending a message, by increasing circulation, by, by opening up detox pathways, by helping your body to relax from the outside in doing all the things that we just shared. That's why.



Yeah. Right. Because if you're going to rest, this is the most powerful tool that I know of on the market.



And I get it. I'm totally biased. It's my business, my company, this is what we do for a living.



But the reason I'm in this business given all the other aspects of health and wellness, red light therapy, cold plunging, heat therapy, I love my sauna, right? Working out in a gym, sunlight grounding. I sleep on a grounding mat every night, right? Like there's a reason why I chose vibration and sound rest and relaxation for my business. And the reason why is because I think to your point, it's something a lot of people don't know about.



I pride myself on being an evangelist, not just for in harmony interactive, but for our entire industry. There's some great human beings that are doing amazing things in our space. And I don't feel like it's getting enough press PR or enough of the conversation is around stress and anxiety and the things that we're doing.



And fortunately it's starting to come up more and more, right? Like in our space, more and more people on your podcast, you're starting to talk about stress and anxiety a lot more often because it's, it's an important aspect. We have a mental health crisis that's happening right now. It has been happening for a while.



It's not getting any better. It's not being addressed. And I want to, and I want to get after it.



I love that Craig. So can you talk about the science behind how this is actually working in the body? We talked about the effects and kind of what's, what's driving the results. I think the science is actually invigorating because I'm a science, I'm a math and science guy, but a lot of people don't always love it.



So I'm going to break this down as easy as I possibly can. Okay. So yeah, so we have this nervous system.



Okay. How does our nervous system interact with the world around us through our five senses? Touch sound are the two predominant ones that we're going to deal with right now. And then I put on an eye mask, so I'm taking away sight.



Okay. Taste and smell are still there. Although you can absolutely do a diffuser in your room so that you're smelling essential oils, right? Which then actually hits your taste buds as well.



So you can encompass and stimulate all five senses using our technology. Particularly the way that our touch interacts with the world. If you touch the tip of your finger, the reason why you recognize that touch is one I'm seeing it and I'm knowing that I'm touching my other hand, but because I have a mechanoreceptor in my skin and that mechanoreceptor in my skin is sending a change in pressure signal to the brain.



And we have mechanoreceptors in our skin from the tips of our fingers to the bottoms of our toes and all around. Except for the back of the elbow. I don't know if you've ever seen this, but you can squeeze that as hard as you want and it won't, right? There's no mechanoreceptors there.



So there's no change in pressure there. It's almost kind of numb, but it's that mechanoreceptor that's sending a signal to the brain. When you're laying down in our sound lounge, which you can go to, I am in harmony.com and you can take a look at the in harmony sound lounge too.



And you can see it's, it's about the size of a twin mattress. It's ergonomically designed inside it or what's called a tactile transducer. It's a fancy word for half of a speaker.



My business partner hates it when I say that because he's the audio engineer because it's not exactly, but it's basically what creates the vibration and you're laying on this device and you're hearing the same things that you're feeling. Okay. So how this triggers and the impact that it has on the physiology is the brain that is accustomed to hearing things through the ear and feeling changes in pressure.



All of a sudden every single mechanoreceptor in the body is sending the same frequency signal that the auditory nerve is sending to the brain as well. And this creates an overwhelming, immersive, three-dimensional sound and physical vibration, vibratory experience that the brain interprets as you are inside the music and the brain interprets as, think about it. You're no longer feeling the world around you.



You're no longer feeling changes in subtle pressure. You're no longer feeling changes in subtle energy. You are completely enveloped in this vibratory field.



And that's what over time relaxes the body. And it takes about 15 minutes for those chemical cascades to kick in. So when you look at the science and research that goes back about 40 years, you will notice that a formal vibroacoustic therapy session, VAT VAT is a 23 minutes, 22 minutes.



Because it takes about 15 minutes for the chemical cascades to kick in, to calm and relax the body, to have the reaction to every cell vibrating for the brain and the nervous system to recognize what's going on and for it to relax. And then once those chemical cascades kick in and you drift into common relaxed, you are held there and it's beautiful. So the first few moments of a sound lounge session can actually feel pretty stimulating.



Every single cell in your body is vibrating and you got to figure out and make heads or tails of what's going on. And as you make heads or tails of that and the chemical cascades of this feels good, this is relaxing, this is soothing on that first session, future sessions after that. And it's just muscle memory.



You just, you know exactly what to expect. Might be a new music meditation or a new experience, but for the most part your body already knows what to expect. And it just like that needle on a record just drifts right into that relaxation point.



So it's that chemical cascade associated with getting stressed and anxious, which we are stimulating that response into common relaxed, which is why I tell people start slow. Our sound lounge and our meditation cushion, it's powerful tech. I do not recommend taking it to full tilt and rock and roll.



And I don't care how stressed and how anxious you are or how much you think you want it. Start, start slow. So that's all out there that are going to, yeah, yeah, yeah.



They're like, oh fuck it. It goes to 11. My amps literally go to 11 for anybody that's seen spinal, um, my, my apps go to 11.



They're literally zero to 11 or one to 11. Um, so the reality is start at four and I mean that like give yourself enough of a vibratory experience, but take it easy and ease into it. It is powerful tech.



If you haven't moved every single cell in your body, you are going to trigger a D to all of your detox pathways are going to open up at once. Yeah. And if you take it to 11 and you shake out and you ring your entire body out, you bet you're going to have a Herxheimer reaction.



You're going to have a detox reaction and it's not going to be pleasant on the other side of it. You might feel great. And there might be somebody going like, well, I'm already doing a, you know, I'm already taking care of myself.



Let's just take this thing up. And that's cool. But I recommend people start really soft and really slow because of what's happening scientifically in the body and how it's operating.



Yeah. I think that's fair. I think this is all so fascinating.



And Craig, I know you got to run. I want to hit you with one last question before you go and maybe we'll do a part two because I think we just barely scratched the surface today. But I would love that as you're looking forward, how do you hope to sort of continue shaping the conversation around mental health, wellness, wellbeing through vibroacoustic therapy? Well, I think by more and more people, look, our company is growing by leaps and bounds, right? I am a hardware manufacturer and we make the auditory programs.



We have a record label that makes the music as well. So those are two places that we continue to branch out. We market obviously quite aggressively.



Anybody that's watching this that then goes to our website, you're going to start to get retargeted on Google and Instagram and Facebook. I mean, we're, we're putting ourselves out there pretty dramatically. That's my, that's my sweet spot.



That's where I want to be. I want to be having conversations like this. Many of your listeners have probably heard my voice for the first time, even though you're a long time follower, which I greatly appreciate.



And I want to continue to evangelize. I want more and more people to know about stress and anxiety in the next 12 months, we're going to start three or four different scientific research studies on our technology, using our music meditations that are going to catapult. It's going to take a couple of years for that to get published and for all that to get verified.



So this is very much a long-term view that we're taking on, not just in harmony's role in this space, but also mine personally, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And I'm a happy camper doing it. I'm hanging out with people that are focused on biohacking.



There's probably different forms that our business will take, but this is something that I really enjoy doing and will continue to do until I can't. So for me, it's really a long-term viewpoint of we need to figure out how we can get this conversation more mainstream, how everybody on the planet can get access to our technology. It doesn't mean everybody on the planet owns it, but I want, I want there to be wellness centers and places where you can go to get a session when you need one.



I want them to be in institutions, hospitals, schools. I want them to be at universities. I want them to be an employee as part of employee wellness programs in corporate world.



I want massage therapists and body workers to be using our massage table and our practitioner too, so that they can augment body work and hands-on body work with vibroacoustic therapy. There's a lot built into our future that we are in a lot of ways just putting down the framework for over the last seven years. It's, it's hard to believe we've been doing this for seven years.



And then at the same time, it's like the first four years of this business where just us laying the groundwork and then COVID hit. And, and all of a sudden a lot more people were focused on stress and anxiety and ways that they can take their own health and wellness into their own hands. And it has very much started to increase our representation and, and more and more people are knowing who we are, but there's still a bunch of people that are like in harmony.



I've never heard of that. Right. So for me, it's how do we get the message out to more people? How do we talk about stress and anxiety in a place in a way that people recognize it, realize that it's happening to just about all of us.



Again, 70 plus percent of us feel stress and anxiety every day. And I'd be willing to tell you that the other 30% just aren't being honest with themselves. Um, because that's all our nervous system knows how to do is react to the world around us.



Um, so yeah, I got, got a lot of work to do. That's a big vision, but I'm here to support you. I'm absolutely inspired by the conversation today.



I know our listeners will be as well. And, and look, I'm going to put everything in the show notes. So if you're listening, you're excited about trying out, uh, any of in harmonies products, you want to do some of the vibro acoustic therapy and experience it yourself.



Uh, please visit the website and check it out. Support Craig, check him out on Instagram. I'll have that link there too.



Uh, he's on Instagram. He's on Tik TOK. He's everywhere.



So, um, Craig, thank you so much for being gracious with your time and for everything that you shared today. Brett, my absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for being here.



And by the way, I'm the guy on the other side of the DMS, all of the comments, uh, again, my sweet spot of where I want to be is really at the face of this company and this movement. So if you've got questions for me, I would love to connect. I'm grateful for our time, Brett.



Thank you so much for having me. I am too, Craig. Talk soon.



Bye. And that's a wrap on our insightful conversation with Craig Goldberg, his journey and wisdom and navigating the complexities of stress and in finding peace through mindfulness and vibro acoustic therapy are truly enlightening. I'd like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Craig for joining us and sharing his transformative experiences and insights.



I also want to pause and thank tower community bank once again for continuing to support the impact code, their dedication to community development aligns perfectly with our mission to inspire and empower our listeners to our audience. Thank you for tuning in. Your engagement and your support are what make this podcast a success.



Don't forget to subscribe for more inspiring stories and conversations. And if Craig's journey has sparked your interest, be sure to check out his work and mindfulness and the incredible benefits of vibroacoustic therapy. And if you enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend.



For now, this is Brett Holenbeck signing off from the impact code. Stay inspired, stay curious, and continue to make your impact in your own unique way. Bye.